Otello at the Grand, Leeds

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The war is won. The American Navy, under its African-American leader, is
celebrating in its steel-grey, prison-like quarters of shifting walls,
galleries and staircases. A tall, avuncular senior officer is in control —
with deadly consequences.

Tim Albery’s new production of Verdi’s Otello for Opera
North, updated to the late 1940s in Leslie Travers’s set and costumes, does
nothing to offend and little to inspire. It’s an honest, spare and
unpretentious staging, without ever being quite the sort of heartlifting
celebration one might have hoped for in Verdi’s bicentenary year.